Ahahaha I suppose you could put it that way — I have been having a ~ T I M E ~ (Here, have a Chuuya I doodled recently, anon!)
(General life ramblings under the cut, CW for talk about a sick animal)
This year has been such a mess, but some things have started getting better! One of my roommates got displaced from her job a few months ago, which made our housing situation kinda iffy for a bit there — fortunately she just managed to be rehired somewhere else, which puts us more on an even keel for now. My own financial situation is still not great though, so I very much need to Work On That aksdfjksdjfksd but I have a whole lot less work experience than both my roommates so that's. A problem. Especially with the current state of things. And in the meantime we've had a sick cat for the last...
...
Actually, I'm not exactly sure when our cat got sick, a big chunk of the last year has turned into a blurred mess of stress in my head — but basically, earlier this year my other roommate decided to get Four New Cats and one of the four was a kitten who turned out to have FIP, which is a real nasty disease that almost killed him before our vet figured out what was wrong with him (it's pretty rare, and there's no test for it, so it was a process of elimination that very nearly took too long)(plus the way his symptoms showed up was a bit unusual for FIP)
We managed to get the right treatment for the kitten, and he got through the series of meds and has rapidly improved in terms of FIP symptoms, but after he went off the medicine he immediately got a bad herpes flareup (which is not uncommon, sounds like, FIP is really hard on the immune system) so he's continued to be sick for the last couple months, and got some, uh... I'll just call them 'nasty skin effects', in the interest of not being graphic, which have only recently begun healing properly. He also keeps sneezing, because herpes in cats is also a respiratory disease, which I wasn't aware of. So we're still having to give him a set of antivirals/anti-inflammatories twice a day, as well as keep him in a cone to keep him from reopening anything by scratching his face (again -_-), and the kitten is very not happy about any of it. It takes two of us to get the meds in him, it's a constant arms race between us figuring out new ways to hold him in place and the kitten figuring out how to fight out of our grip, and the whole thing has just been real draining — but! Definitely worth it, because it still seems he has a good chance of pulling through and getting healthy again.
Anyway! Between that and some family troubles (my grandparents have been having a real bad time this year), plus the general state of the country I live in, I've just been reaaaal exhausted lately. I started hating all of my art and writing for a bit, mostly because I haven't had the energy to work on improving and making things how I want them to be, but I'm slowly getting out of that headspace and getting myself to have fun making stuff again! So, progress. If a bit slow, but progress nevertheless! 👍
hii, i wanted to ask, do you prefer top chuuya/bottom dazai or top dazai/bottom chuuya? ^^
I don’t personally enjoy picking one or the other. Part of what drew me to skk’s dynamic in the first place was their back and forth/push and pull dynamic—I still love the dungeon scene so much because of how perfectly it encapsulates that, it just keeps shifting the power dynamic between the two of them back and forth as it progresses! It’s so fun!!
(Rambling under the cut because I got carried away writing about them)
Cause on the first watch of the dungeon scene, with no context for their relationship, Chuuya shows up, and it’s the first time we really see Dazai have that “oh no not HIM” reaction to anyone, prior to that in the show he hasn’t ever been nearly that perturbed—and Chuuya is acting very confident.
But then Dazai immediately starts making fun of him, undermines some of that tension and makes it clear they know each other well, especially when Chuuya also starts poking back. Then it’s really made clear they know each other well when Chuuya says he knows Dazai is plotting something. And also reveals that they were partners!
Then we have Chuuya freeing him, which raises Chuuya’s perceived power level because he just broke a damn chain with his foot—but then Dazai reveals he had already broken out of the handcuffs which is the first time we’ve seen him do that, and then they actually start fighting and Dazai gets the first hit in but then Chuuya hits back and is obviously way physically stronger(even without his ability!).
But Dazai guarded against it in time because he knows Chuuya’s attack patterns well! But then Chuuya reveals he’s fast enough for that not to matter! And then whips out a knife! But then Dazai has his whole “haha if you kill me I actually win and ruin your life lmao” speech!
And then the deescalation part is just as fun, once they stop fighting and are just bickering. And the part in the manga where Dazai genuinely laughs at their in-joke? So good. First time we’ve seen Dazai laugh that hard.
The whole scene is such a good introduction to their dynamic—and all that just continues each subsequent time Chuuya shows up, and especially gets demonstrated in the light novels! Those introduce the other aspects of them as well, where Dazai can’t always predict Chuuya(especially when they first met, in Fifteen) and how Dazai lets Chuuya choose for himself when it comes to finding out if he’s human or not, and all of Chuuya’s many many punishments he has for Dazai of differing levels of severity—they’re so abnormal about each other!
Oh and can’t forget the Chuuya-shoots-Dazai-in-the-head-but-stops-the-bullet-just-before-it-hits-him, aka extremely unhinged trust exercise that Dazai just casually reveals they’ve done in the past. And Asagiri saying that Dazai had no guarantee that Chuuya wasn’t actually a vampire, and just believed he was too powerful to get got? More unhinged trust! I love themmmm they’re so freaking weird(affectionate)
…Anyway I got a bit distracted from the original point, but TLDR: neither/both! To me they are metaphorically(and sometimes not so metaphorically) in a constant state of rolling over!
Hello. Will you update skyline pigeon soon? I think about it!
No exact date, but hopefully soonish! (Sorry anon, I know it’s been a while since you sent this ask!)
I just recently started being able to write again! Without going into too much detail, the couple years prior to 2026 really kneecapped my ability to write because of personal life issues. Things have been slowly improving in terms of my mental health this year, but at the same time I started a new job that’s been kicking my ass (and also involves a fair amount of overtime), so I’ve been struggling to find time and energy — but I recently started making a lot of progress on writing and drawing practice! Been working a lot on the teleporting fic, but Skyline Pigeon is also on my priority list because I love that fic. And I’m still gonna finish the Dazai and the moving detective agency epilogue, too — though with that one I genuinely need to find my notes to make sure I’m not forgetting any important details, so that one may take a bit longer than the others :0
Probably an unnecessary PSA for anyone who isn't me, but don't try to run across those yellow truncated domes on the sidewalk when it's been raining, the ones in my area at least can get extremely slippery apparently — I slipped, fell, and gave myself a concussion by hitting my chin too hard on the pavement lol
It was a mild concussion, and I am otherwise fine apart from a few bumps and bruises and mildly displaced teeth, but still! Concussions are not fun, 0/10 would not recommend, it's been more than a couple days and I still keep having to go lie down in a dark room.
So just a heads up that I'll remain slow to post for a bit, brain still isn't 100% down with screens, but hopefully that'll improve soon
Hullo y'all! Just a couple quick updates: sorry for going super quiet without warning again, one of my grandparents ended up in the hospital last month with a serious health issue and everything's just been a lot. But the situation is improving somewhat, so my brain is slowly returning to a workable state. Anyway, all that to say: thank you very much for your patience with my in-progress fics and comics, I really appreciate how non-pressuring and kind everyone has been. You all are awesome!
(And I have once again fallen very behind on asks — that is on my list to catch up on as well, thanks for your patience in that area too aksjfksdj)
Other update: as my brain was returning to equilibrium I went on an OC-drawing spree, so I revamped my original art blog to post that stuff over there. Changed the profile pic (I cut my hair recently so I wanted a new self-portrait to match) and also changed the URL cause I wasn't super fond of the old one, so!
If any of you are interested in checking out my non-BSD art, my other blog is now @betsytwohats
(Ah, and to be clear, I'm not gonna stop posting on this blog, my other blog is just a separate place for me to put OC stuff + some non-BSD fanart 👍)
Aaand lastly, here is a Dazai doodle from my sketchbook! I wanted to draw him looking like he's going to cause Problems (plus a scribble-Chuuya from the big sketchdump I just posted on my other blog)
How did you start to learn drawing comics? I have tried but they were....... b a d
tips? 🥺
also glad to see u posting again! I've missed u!
Sorry this took a bit to answer, I was trying to think of what bits of advice I can give —
And honestly, how I personally learned to make comics was just by making LOTS of comics of dubious quality! I've always loved sequential art, I grew up devouring any and all comics and manga I could get my hands on, and some, like Calvin and Hobbes, I would read over and over and over again. i loved animation as well, but comics were always more readily available to me. So I started trying to draw them pretty early on — I actually went back through my sketchbooks and found a bunch of my earlier attempts while thinking about this ask :0
(I'll put them under the cut, since I ended up going through a lot as examples)
Here's a couple pages of a super early one, where I was just guessing at the spellings of most words, and the overall narrative is pretty incomprehensible (trust me, there's a lot of pages of this story and they're all like this) (the two main characters look identical, which really doesn't help):
Here's a couple ones that must have been more when I was a preteen, better in terms of spelling but still pretty chaotic with panelling and word bubble placement:
Then I had more of a stick-figure doodle comic time in my early teens, still struggling a bit with panelling (that first one is supposed to be read top to bottom, left to right, but there is no indication of this lol), but I was really just trying to get down jokes and thoughts in comic format:
Then we have post-16 year old me, which is about when I started drawing daily (it was very therapeutic and I needed it a lot, still kinda do), and in a lot of ways the comics did not get any less messy, but I was having a lot of fun:
Aaand here we're getting into college age (also getting back into OC comics rather than daily life ones):
Most of my attempts in my sketchbook really stayed messy in part because I was exhausted all the time from classes, but also the more I drew the less I worried about things like specific panelling and was just prioritizing getting the vibes and expressions down. (This is also around when I started doing digital art, so I was also figuring out that I could sketch things out on paper and then fix them up on my tablet)
Annnd then we're into post-graduation times, still in the midst of covid, and also when I fell headfirst into BSD brainrot!
BSD really came out of left field and possessed me to really, REAAAALLY push my limits of what I had tried to do before, especially in terms of just. Making finished comics that I actually wanted to share with other people. I had done that a bit before, but that early dead apple one comic I based off the fic I wrote was by far the longest, most challenging comic I had ever done — and now I look back at that one and think "oh man I would do pretty much every part of this differently". But it was a really important one for me to make, because I learned so much from it!
And I learned so much from doing BSD fan comics that it's made me want to work on OC comics too, and use a bunch of the things I've learned :0 I've been trying that, actually — starting with more of a webtoon format, which is a whole different kind of page structure, we'll see if I stick with that — in short, I still have a LOT I want to learn about how to make comics well!!
(this is turning into me exposing my very messy drafts — behold, my OC Will)
So yeah! My main bit of advice is mostly the same that I would give for any kind of art: try to make a lot of comics, and if there are aspects of them that you feel aren't working, try to analyze exactly what you feel isn't right, and then go and look at other people's work and see what they're doing that's different. And then try again! With comics, I would especially look at panelling, both how all the panels work together on a page, and also how each individual panel is framed. How your eye naturally moves through the page is also really important.
For example, in that early stick-figure one entitled "distractions", I realized after I finished drawing it that even though I was intending each column to be read top-to-bottom, I kept naturally reading it left-to-right first, which made the whole thing completely nonsensical. So then I tried to keep that in mind next time I was doodling a comic!
(Also full disclaimer, I have only taken a couple of art classes and have never taken a class specifically in comic making, so there's sure to be tons I don't know — all I have is trial and error and a deep love of sequential art lol)
Yup, it definitely is! 👍 Just been very slow going — though this morning, weirdly enough, I woke up and my brain went "oh yeah, I can work on that" aksdjfksdjfks so! Progress! Hopefully I'll be able to finish the next chapter soonish, though I'm not gonna try and give a specific time estimate because Yikes I do not trust the universe to not bonk me with Another Thing the moment I gain a scrap of hubris lol — but yeah, sorry about the long hiatus, this year truly has been one thing after another. And thank you! It's really nice to hear that people still care about it, even though it's been a while since I could update it
